Date: Februrary 2007
Substance: Ketamine
Dose: 100mg intravenous x2
Subject: 125 lb male
Disclaimer: This was done legally in a hospital setting.
About a month ago while I was out at a guitar shop with one of my friends, I had a partial lung collapse and required hospitalization. After examining a chest x-ray to determine the cause, the doctors decided that a chest tube needed to be put in, and that conscious sedation was the safest method. They told me that I would be put out with ketamine through my IV, and asked if I had ever heard of it before. In addition, anti-anxiety and anti-nausea substances were administered to reduce negative side effects. Prior to administration of the ketamine, I was told that I wouldn’t remember a thing afterwards. but I thought to myself, “I hope I do.”
After the injection I didn’t really feel anything, so I asked whether or not they had given me the ketamine yet. They assured me that they had and that it should kick in any second. As hard as I tried to focus on my state of awareness so I could determine exactly when it hit, I couldn’t do so. I blacked out for a moment and when I regained consciousness I was tripping.
I was floating around through the void at first. There was no landscape, and I had no body. I was just a part of the surrounding environment, egoless and free. After some amount of time, I thought to myself, “this feels rather strange, is this how my existence has always been?” Eventually I came to the conclusion that I am eternal, and that conscious awareness is all I have ever been. I was very relaxed and elated, and I felt very much like I was a part of the entire universe/god. It felt like aeons were passing, and later, when I was nearly fully conscious again, I described the experience as having taken “lifetimes,” though I was told I regained consciousness after only 10 minutes.
The next part of my experience was quite hallucinatory. I was laying on the hospital bed, but I was in the guitar shop from earlier. There was a square pillar in the shop right outside the room in which my friend and I were trying out various acoustic guitars. I remember thinking I was going around this pillar over and over again, being moved by the doctors. Pretty soon, the hospital merged with the guitar shop, and I was in both places at once. As I went around the pillar, the scenery changed, and eventually my trip around it became an escalation up flight after flight of stairs, each one containing a different colour scene. One was orange, one was green, one was blue, etc. Everything had a gem-like quality to it with unique shapes and patterns, and I really had no idea what was going on. I tried to talk to the doctors, asking where I was, but at the same time, the whole thing felt natural enough, like I was on a ride in the amusement park. The movement on the hospital bed was very quick, like I was being rushed around through a tunnel at light speed. Even people’s speech seemed like life was a tape on fast-forward.
Suddenly everything was a brilliant white stretching infinitely in each direction. A golden castle floated before me, with countless disembodied entities floating around it. I was caught in its orbit and floated around it. I remember wondering if this was all the universe ever was, or if there was a “real life” beyond it. After struggling to remember, I decided that I had been floating around the castle for all eternity, and that there was no other existence. Suddenly I began to hear thoughts in my head that weren’t my own. One sounded like one of the nurses from before. I could communicate with them by thinking and just barely make out what they had to say–their voices were so fast and quiet. I asked if they were real, and they said “yes” and laughed. Although I believed them, I couldn’t help but wonder: how do I know you’re really real?
I seemed to come down after this peak experience in what I describe as plateaus. I would fall sharply from one state of the trip to a lower level of it, stay there for a while, and then hit another level.
My ability to communicate with the outside world was severely limited at first, but got easier and easier. When I tried to open my mouth to speak, it wouldn’t move. However when I “thought” the words to the doctors, sound came out and I could speak. Eventually, at a lower plateau, I could move my mouth to communicate, but it felt very slow and clumsy. I asked if they had been taking me into other rooms, as I had been experiencing earlier, but they assured me I was in the same room the entire time. Also, eventually remembering that I was undergoing surgery (though I had serious doubts about it), I asked “is the tube in yet?” and heard a nurse tell me that it was. Some strange noise in the background was present and sounded like a high BPM drum beat, or like there were frames missing from sound.
While gradually coming back to consciousness, I was still in a very altered state of mind. I thought my dad was the mayor from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and that one of the nurse’s was Frankenstein’s creature. It was nearly impossible to focus my vision properly on anything. My family tells me that I kept asking them the same questions over and over, such as for how long I had been out, if my girlfriend was there, where I was, and so forth. At one point, after being annoyed with having to answer me so many times, my dad told me I was out for three months. At first I believed him, but then I told him he was a lying bastard.
In all, this was an amazing experience, and I had an unbelievable amount of fun while tripping. I gained a lot of insight on the nature of my consciousness and mind, and would definitely try this drug again.
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I wrote this in the hospital while not fully lucid; excuse my poor writing.
